6-9-06 The Creation Story
When I was about 8 years old, I found it difficult to believe the creation story in the old testament. It didn't connect with any reality I could observe. Even in considering it as an imaginative, fictional story I was put off by it. There's a thing regarding fiction called "suspension of disbelief" wherein you can allow yourself to basically get into a fictional story, know that it's all just made up, yet visualize these things as really happening, anyway.
In all the half century that's transpired since I was only 8 years old, my view of the old testament creation story has remained a matter of not only disbelief, but complete rejection.
Enter the works of Zecharia Sitchin. I've read the first four books of his "Earth Chronicles" series, thus far. The first one, "The 12th Planet," speculates upon the the meanings of words as they have changed through the ages, beginning with ancient clay tablets covered with cuneiform "language" from Sumeria 6,000 years ago, through to the Hebrew language versions of the old testament.
Sitchin's work is a two-fold matter. On the one hand, he analyzes an endless array of artefacts, documents, studies done by others, along with pictures from ancient times. It's quite tedious. There are long pages of these analyses, citing this and citing that, along with endless references to the illustrations in the book, which are plentiful enough.
On the other hand, once he's presented his voluminous evidence, his speculations can only be put into a category we'll have to call "One Size Fits All."
His analysis of the creation story from the old testament is compared to the creation story found on clay tablets from ancient Sumeria, along with successive similar stories from subsequent civilizations leading up to ours. It's a fascinating study, a mind-boggling succession of speculative connections, and quite frankly one of the more interesting and credible "crackpot" or "fringe" books that I've read in a very long time.
An underlying theme in his work is the idea that the creation story comes down to us from ancient pre-history through millennia of "playing telephone". The meanings of words in the long succession of the story being retold across various civilizations across great amounts of time, and across the translations of many different languages, end up being a matter of asking, "How can one make any sense of this?"
Indeed, when you read the creation story in the old testament, how can you make any sense of it at all?
The creation story as expained by Sitchin in "The 12th Planet", however, is one that I find myself able to "suspend disbelief" about. I consider it to be worth reading simply because it's "thinking outside the box" and the work of a "horizontal thinker."
Where the first book addresses the creation story and events leading up to "the great flood" (Noah and the Ark), the second book, "Stairway To Heaven" focuses upon various quests from Gilgamesh to ancient Egypt. The third book, "The Wars of Gods and Men" picks up with post-diluvial events through to the time of Abraham, and the fourth book, "The Lost Realms" enters into mesoamerica.
It was right around the point where I was finishing the second book that I ran across the article referenced in my post entitled "The Fig" from a few days ago. The timing was good, since I had been reading about some of Sitchin's analyses of events from pretty much the same time frame of ancient pre-history. Suffice it to say that I was quite taken aback!
I would recommend this series for anyone who enjoyed "The Da Vinci Code", since this stuff is great "mind candy". Where the "Da Vinci Code" tantalizes those who don't believe what's written in the new testament, the "Earth Chronicles" series will blow your socks off (if you don't believe what's in the old testament)!
Much of what he writes is palatable and even believable, but for a couple of caveats. One is that Sitchin's detractors have a lot of ammunition. Another is the ethno-centric nature of Sitchin's speculations, which tends to clearly skew his conclusions about many things. The last (but not least) would be the tedious volume of "proofing" which appears quite scholarly, but is, nonetheless, difficult to follow without a grain of salt at just about every juncture.
Basically, I do get the sense that this guy is really onto something. But the general consensus so far has been that no matter how much of this stuff Sitchin has dug up and "connected the dots" with, hard science has yet to give him any quarter.
Of course, the real proof of any theory is that it predicts future discovery. Oddly enough, as time has passed since Sitchin wrote his first book in this series in 1976, archeology has been turning up more and more "unexplainable" artefacts that, under the wider scope of Sitchin's "thinking outside the box" tend to fall right into place.
Today, the creation story makes more sense to me, not in any scientifically supportable manner, but in the sense that it appears to have been based on much earlier and more detailed stories that, however science ends up treating them, were pervasive across thousands of years and distances spanning the globe. Moreover, the bases for the creation story sure don't paint the kind of picture that currently established religious traditions would either like or accept! And by that I mean, WOW what a smack in the face of religion THIS stuff is!
...excuse me now, while I go eat another apple.
In all the half century that's transpired since I was only 8 years old, my view of the old testament creation story has remained a matter of not only disbelief, but complete rejection.
Enter the works of Zecharia Sitchin. I've read the first four books of his "Earth Chronicles" series, thus far. The first one, "The 12th Planet," speculates upon the the meanings of words as they have changed through the ages, beginning with ancient clay tablets covered with cuneiform "language" from Sumeria 6,000 years ago, through to the Hebrew language versions of the old testament.
Sitchin's work is a two-fold matter. On the one hand, he analyzes an endless array of artefacts, documents, studies done by others, along with pictures from ancient times. It's quite tedious. There are long pages of these analyses, citing this and citing that, along with endless references to the illustrations in the book, which are plentiful enough.
On the other hand, once he's presented his voluminous evidence, his speculations can only be put into a category we'll have to call "One Size Fits All."
His analysis of the creation story from the old testament is compared to the creation story found on clay tablets from ancient Sumeria, along with successive similar stories from subsequent civilizations leading up to ours. It's a fascinating study, a mind-boggling succession of speculative connections, and quite frankly one of the more interesting and credible "crackpot" or "fringe" books that I've read in a very long time.
An underlying theme in his work is the idea that the creation story comes down to us from ancient pre-history through millennia of "playing telephone". The meanings of words in the long succession of the story being retold across various civilizations across great amounts of time, and across the translations of many different languages, end up being a matter of asking, "How can one make any sense of this?"
Indeed, when you read the creation story in the old testament, how can you make any sense of it at all?
The creation story as expained by Sitchin in "The 12th Planet", however, is one that I find myself able to "suspend disbelief" about. I consider it to be worth reading simply because it's "thinking outside the box" and the work of a "horizontal thinker."
Where the first book addresses the creation story and events leading up to "the great flood" (Noah and the Ark), the second book, "Stairway To Heaven" focuses upon various quests from Gilgamesh to ancient Egypt. The third book, "The Wars of Gods and Men" picks up with post-diluvial events through to the time of Abraham, and the fourth book, "The Lost Realms" enters into mesoamerica.
It was right around the point where I was finishing the second book that I ran across the article referenced in my post entitled "The Fig" from a few days ago. The timing was good, since I had been reading about some of Sitchin's analyses of events from pretty much the same time frame of ancient pre-history. Suffice it to say that I was quite taken aback!
I would recommend this series for anyone who enjoyed "The Da Vinci Code", since this stuff is great "mind candy". Where the "Da Vinci Code" tantalizes those who don't believe what's written in the new testament, the "Earth Chronicles" series will blow your socks off (if you don't believe what's in the old testament)!
Much of what he writes is palatable and even believable, but for a couple of caveats. One is that Sitchin's detractors have a lot of ammunition. Another is the ethno-centric nature of Sitchin's speculations, which tends to clearly skew his conclusions about many things. The last (but not least) would be the tedious volume of "proofing" which appears quite scholarly, but is, nonetheless, difficult to follow without a grain of salt at just about every juncture.
Basically, I do get the sense that this guy is really onto something. But the general consensus so far has been that no matter how much of this stuff Sitchin has dug up and "connected the dots" with, hard science has yet to give him any quarter.
Of course, the real proof of any theory is that it predicts future discovery. Oddly enough, as time has passed since Sitchin wrote his first book in this series in 1976, archeology has been turning up more and more "unexplainable" artefacts that, under the wider scope of Sitchin's "thinking outside the box" tend to fall right into place.
Today, the creation story makes more sense to me, not in any scientifically supportable manner, but in the sense that it appears to have been based on much earlier and more detailed stories that, however science ends up treating them, were pervasive across thousands of years and distances spanning the globe. Moreover, the bases for the creation story sure don't paint the kind of picture that currently established religious traditions would either like or accept! And by that I mean, WOW what a smack in the face of religion THIS stuff is!
...excuse me now, while I go eat another apple.
posted by Jeff Barnard at 6:13 PM
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